There is a Hell

Being an atheist, god is not part of the equation but hell does reside, in Alberta, CA, as seen in the Tar Sands operation pix, courtesy of Nat Geo. The enormity of the project and the impact it's already having on the environment boggles the mind even though the pipeline itself is far from completion. BRT has written copiously about the impending disaster known as Keystone but as a "subtle" reminder, read on if you have the courage to do so.

Nowhere on Earth is more earth being moved these days than in the Athabasca Valley. To extract each barrel of oil from a surface mine, the industry must first cut down the forest, then remove an average of two tons of peat and dirt that lie above the oil sands layer, then two tons of the sand itself. It must heat several barrels of water to strip the bitumen from the sand and upgrade it, and afterward it discharges contaminated water into tailings ponds like the one near Mildred Lake. They now cover around 50 square miles. Last April some 500 migrating ducks mistook one of those ponds, at a newer Syncrude mine north of Fort McKay, for a hospitable stopover, landed on its oily surface, and died. The incident stirred international attention—Greenpeace broke into the Syncrude facility and hoisted a banner of a skull over the pipe discharging tailings, along with a sign that read "World's Dirtiest Oil: Stop the Tar Sands."

Moving asphalt through a pipe 36"in diameter requires three steps. 1. Heating the sludge to high temperature, (think hot tar when paving a road as dibit is actually tar/asphalt) 2. Thin same with artificial hydrocarbons (naphtha etc., etc.) to keep it in a liquid state and 3. Move the stuff at higher pressure than that of crude (see 1. & 2.)  Because of these "wonderful" characteristics, the impact of dibit spills is far worse then that of crude as seen by the residents of  Mayflower Ak who saw first hand what a liquified asphalt spill of 5000 barrels really means. 

In perspective, imagine a Keystone rupture, with a pipe diameter of 36", vs the 9" pipe break of Mayflower or... instead of 5000 barrels, think 45,000 and have it go into the Missouri. Something to think about considering just how corrosive this stuff truly is. Already, 12 leaks, including Mayflower,  have occurred.

Over the last year we’ve had many recent indications of the risks of tar sands diluted bitumen pipelines – an 840,000 gallon spill in Michigan, a 250,000 gallon spill outside Chicago, a 1.3 million gallon spill in Alberta, as well as our recent report examining the safety of tar sands pipelines.  On May 7, the Keystone tar sands pipeline provided yet another warning when it spilled approximately 21,000 gallons of crude in North Dakota. This is its eleventh and most significant spill. 

Even better, we don't know how to clean this stuff up.

The clean up of dilbit is entirely different from that of oil. The industry knows that but where's the effort on their part to ensure that communities along their pipeline routes have properly trained clean-up crews. How can the clean up proceed if the crew doesn't even know what they are dealing with? As we see from the Mayflower, Arkansas spill, the clean up involved allowing the dilbit to get into the wet lands of Lake Conway and then pieces of absorbent material (looking like paper towels) were dropped on top of contaminated sections. Dilbit is heavy, it sinks. This photo demonstrates that they really do not know what they are doing.

Update to expand on this statement. The "paper towels" are not only useless, they inhibit the evaporation of the chemicals in the dilbit. From the clean-up of the Kalamazoo dilbit disaster:

But as the bitumen mixed with grains of sand and other particles in the river, the weight of the sediment pulled the bitumen underwater.

This dilbit in the wetlands of Conway Lake will sink to the bottom dragging the absorbent papers with it.

Well Barak, do you have the guts to pull the plug on this Fubar? One never knows, do one?

As a parting shot, here's a before and after shot of the tar sands. Question, how would you like have this in your back yard?

Addendum: Click here for in depth data from people who really know about Keystone;